


The Finals

by Androids_in_Metropolis



Series: Maximoff/Barton Family Relations ft. Auntie Nat [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gay Character, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt Pietro, Langauge, M/M, New Relationship, Papa Clint, bulling, caring!clint, parenting is hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 11:53:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4828142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Androids_in_Metropolis/pseuds/Androids_in_Metropolis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pietro thinks he can deal with everything by himself, and then when he can't, he doesn't ask for help. Clint gives it to him anyway. </p><p>In other words, Clint loves the Speedy bastard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Finals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CWMaddy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CWMaddy/gifts).



> This is pretty long. Sorry   
> xx

ietro had a crush. He was in love. He was in love with him, oh, God, he was in love. Loving is so easy when you’re young, before someone has shown you to be a little bit afraid of falling in love. Some people never get tainted with that painful lesson, but some people do, sometimes before they’re ready. Pietro knows Wanda was hurt because she thought she was in love, and he doesn’t want to have the same thing happen to him, but oh, Remy was so sweet. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, and he trusted him. He was in love with him, after all. It didn’t take much to place your trust with someone you thought you wouldn’t mind being with forever. 

Pietro watched him in class, watching how he chewed on the end of his pencil and how he would raise his hand only after he had worked the answer out in his head first; You could see his wheels turning. He places sports, and Pietro watched those too, though he couldn’t play along (sports weren’t an option when you could literally end a game in a few seconds flat). Remy took up a great deal of his thoughts, if he was honest, and may or may not have been the reason he forgot to turn in his homework on a few occasions. 

After the head over heals joy of falling in love though, came the pain of worrying about it. Why was he thinking of Remy like this? The same Remy he watched change every single day for gym? The same Remy who was his friend? Whom he spoke to on occasion, but no more than he had to? What was wrong with him? What would Remy think? Oh, what would Clint think? What would Wanda think? Laura, Nat, Lily, Jacob...worry, worry, worry. The day he realised he was in love with Remy was the last time his heart had beat normally, and the last time he dared look Remy in the eye. 

He excused himself to the Nurse's’ office, a full blown panic attack interrupting his school day and causing Clint to be called from the Farm to take him home, stopping on the way for him to vomit in a ditch as he began to internally freak out over the fact that this wasn’t normal; THe other guys talked about the cheer team, and the all girls school down the street, not the all boy’s basketball team he had sat and watched every game with a bunch of fifteen year old girls and the token gay student who was routinely thrown in dumpsters and abused in the hall. Clint had no idea what was going on. 

He didn’t asked Pietro any questions on the drive home, just sat him down on the couch and told him to calm down. He told him whatever it was, it would be alright. He told him he loved him, and then he asked him if it was something that would get him or Wanda hurt. When Pietro answered negatively and asked if he wanted to talk about it or not, and again, Pietro said no, instead standing up and heading to bed. He didn’t appear that day, though Clint did notice the glow of a laptop screen from the bedroom door. He wondered what Pietro was working out...Honestly, if he was safe, he didn’t mind him having secrets. 

Pietro did the research; He knew all the terms. He knew what gay was, knew about all the sexualities in between. He knew what coming out was, and about bullying, and how there were safe places, and by the time he went back to school with Wanda the following Monday he felt equipped to deal with his crush. He would just ignore it-That was a valid option, wasn’t it? 

All of that came crashing down when someone noted that he stared at Remy from across the classroom. He seemed to make it his personal mission to make Pietro’s life hell after that, and Pietro’s tactic of not saying anything and ignoring how he felt crumbled under the weight on the bully’s onslaught of insults and precisely aimed punches. Of course, he could have easily gotten out of their way, but that would out him in more ways than one. 

While he had been open to the idea that he might be gay, he hadn’t been open to sharing it. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know; Everything he read said highschool was a bad time to be out, and from what he learned over the next week, it hadn’t been exaggerating. He found ways to avoid Wanda, as people had yet to figure out they were related, though he did find himself routinely being pushed into lockers or onto the floor. 

Name calling came next, and Pietro honestly prefered the physical fights. The names wore on him, and often he found himself skipping out on his friends after school just to get home and lock himself in his room or play with baby Nathaniel and wonder, with some desperateness, when it would all come out. Though no one could prove he was gay, it didn’t really matter whether he was or wasn’t. The kids would tease him for it, either way, and that was almost more annoying than them being right. He wondered how long it would be until Wanda found out, and until his friend’s found out. He wondered how long he could keep his family from knowing. At least Nathaniel couldn’t speak, yet. 

As it turned out, his family found out first, when Wanda came out and accidently outed her brother by speaking a little too loudly. That night they had a minie pride celebration that brought the confused, high strung Pietro to tears. The Barton’s explained that they didn’t ‘give a fucking shit’, in Clint’s exact words. 

“Just as long as you’re happy, Laura said, taking her eldest son into her arms and giving him a tight hug. “If you’re happy, we’re happy. There are rules about dating though,” she added, thinking of the last time one of her children had a boyfriend she hadn’t cared to share with the family. It hadn’t ended well for anybody. 

“Yes,” Clind agreed, his hand on Laura’s shoulder. The little kids were running around the table, not understanding what was going on, but having a ball with the streamers Laura had put out for the impromptu ‘ pwide pawty’. “You can’t date anyone we haven’t met first, and you can’t stay out all night, and you cannot go to their house unless we know their parents, and uh, we need to have a talk if you guys, eh…” Clint had turned a bright shade of red, loosing track of his sentence as he averted his eyes and looked at his feet. He wasn’t in the mood to think about his children growing up and wanting to be intimate with anyone. He was never in the mood for that, actually. 

“What Clint means, is, you can’t have sex unless we’ve talked about it, and the consequences,” Laura said, picking up where her husband had left off, having so such quals about talking about the dirty deed. 

Pietro, on the other hand, did, and didn’t even wait for her to finish before turning red and looking at his feet, barely nodding that he understood. Laura just laughed at her two ‘men’ and their awkwardness about openness. It was charmingly adorable. 

After that the main thing that kept Pietro up at night was the bullying at school. His friends had found out through the grapevine, and while he still had neither confirmed or denied the rumours people had taken it as the truth, though no one was quite sure why. No one could recall Pietro ever having a boyfriend, or outright saying he was gay, but for some reason people were convinced. Pietro wondered if Remy knew, and if Remy cared. The thought excited him, in a weird way. He was still sure he was in love, much as he denied the fact to anyone that asked. 

The big problems were; How to keep his family from finding out about the lockers, and the pushing, and names, and all the various tortures Pietro was sure his harassers would have come up with by the next week of school, and also how to keep his crush secret. He had tried giving up looking at Remy during class, and stopped going to his games, and avoided him in the halls, but for some reason he just couldn’t do it; He found his eyes wandering over to his friend without his permission, and his feet taking him towards the gym when he played, his thoughts all leading to Remy. 

He didn’t see an easy way out. 

\-----------------------------------

After that the bullying only got worse, the bullies getting more and more confident as he continued to not fight back, even publicly admitting he was gay when one of the less sure of his harassers asked him in the hall, his hot breath blowing uncomfortably into his face. 

“You gay, Barton?” he had asked, his meaty hands pressing the smaller boy into the lockers, his elbow at an awkward angle with the harsh metal, the sound of his bone grinding into the metal causing shivers to run up his spine in the most uncomfortable of ways. 

“Yes, so what?” Pietro had replied in a moment of cool bravery, his voice clear and cool as ice, his eyes glinting with some sort of strange determination. He didn’t understand why he did it, but he did. “Are you?” 

That had earned him a punch to the gut that had him on his knees, tears in his ice blue eyes. Remy had seen it, and Pietro was humiliated as his friend came over and helped him up, helping him brush himself off and pick up his things. 

“That was really brave” Remy noted, handing him his biology notebook, a highlighter, and a few pens he had dropped when he had fallen to the ground. “That’s pretty cool, knowing who you are.” 

Those words have left a little burn in the back of Pietro’s mind. He wondered what they meant. Did they mean something more than exactly what they said? Did Remy not know who he was? Or was he simply noting Pietro’s uncharacteristic surety in that moment? He found himself almost hoping that Remy was confused, that maybe he would want his help to...figure things out?

He pushed the thought away. 

They went to class together, and then Pietro followed him to his basketball game, watching him play. He could have sworn that Remy had smiled at him as he dunked the ball in, winning the final point. 

That was the highpoint of his week, and of course, Friday was the low point. He was punched in the face, creating a bruise that he couldn’t hide. He wasn’t sure what he was going to tell his parents, or Wanda, or his friends...He just didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t tell them what was going on. He skipped on his friends again, going home and locking himself in his room. He didn’t come down for dinner, saying he was tired. 

Clint was getting worried, and Laura was already working out what happened. 

“Clint, I think he’s getting bullied at school,” Laura whispered one night as they lay next to each other in the dark, their hands wound together underneath the sheets. “I mean, he’s gay. He’s got an accent, and he’s not the strongest kid,” she whispering her worries. 

She was voicing Clint’s. 

“I know, I know...I don’t know what we can do, not yet,” Clint replied, already hating the fact that he would have to wait until he had some sort of proof, even if it was just Pietro’s word against whoever had given him the shiner he was trying to hide by staying in his room. 

They fell asleep worrying; Parenting is hard. 

\---------------------------------

The push Clint needed-That proof that he needed-came the next Wednesday in form of a call from the school. Pietro had been beaten up, badly. There was blood, and a few broken ribs, stitches being needed for a gash above his eyebrow caused by a shoe making contact with his skin. Pietro was in the hospital when Clint got the call. 

He had stormed in, finding his son in a bed in a private room (he was a minor), his face white and an IV drip sending morphine into his system. He was high as a kite, and wound up in so many bandages across his chest that he couldn’t see his son’s actual skin. 

“Who did this? I need names, now!” Clint growled, holding Pietro’s hand. He was upset, to say the least. He had thought Pietro would come forward and ask for help, especially after the first semester and the issues with Wanda. He had hoped Pietro would trust him enough to ask for help, or Laura, or Nat, or even just the teachers. It was too late now, though, and now he was going to have to be forceful. 

Pietro gave him a sad, crooked, high smile, shaking his blond curls, squeezing Clint’s hand as if to reassure himself that his ‘Papa’ was still there, sitting with him. Protecting him. 

“I don’t know, Matt Hermon, Kate Steinz, Mark Manzel,” he listened off his fingers, his movements weird and drunk, his eyes watering with the effort of thinking through the morphine haze. “They just don’t like me...I didn’t fight back, I’m sorry,” he mumbled, crying now. 

Clint was upset, but not with Pietro. He hugged his teenaged son to his chest, careful not to break him any further than he already was, so, so careful with him porcelain son. Parenting teenagers was hard; He wished he had known what he was signing up for. He wished he had been a better dad, that he had found out sooner, than he had found some way to get proof of the bullying before it had gotten this far. Surely, there must have been something he and Laura and Nat could have done before it had gotten this out of hand. 

Pushing all those thoughts away and sat with his son, just being there for him, listening to him ramble about school and his friends and his bullies and what he had for lunch and why he didn’t like Lily’s literary choices and how he wanted to write book sometime and how he was disappointed that Manchester lost the cup and how everything felt weird and detached and how his mouth was dry and how he loved his family. It was a weird, never ending, drug induced sentence. 

When Pietro finally fell asleep Clint made a call to the school, telling the principal the names of the students who had done this to Pietro and explaining how long it had been going on and how his son was in danger on the campus. He threatened to bring the law into it if they couldn’t work it out, and then when the call was over, he sat next to Pietro’s bed and cried. He didn’t want to think that his kid would ever hurt like this, and while he knew bad things had happened to him in Sokovia he had thought that bringing him out to the farm would be a good thing. Now, he wasn’t so sure. 

\-----------------------------------

Remy visited Pietro in the hospital with a group of his friends, but he stayed after the group had left, sitting by his friend's bed side. 

“I-uh, I wanna tell you something,” Remy began, blushing lightly as he reached awkwardly for Pietro’s hand. His friend looked so pale against the sheets, his white hair in stark contrast with the grey, hospital issue sheets. “I like you, like like you, and I suck at confessing...I uh, just wanted you to know,” Remy stuttered to a halt, waiting for a reply from his friend. 

Pietro replied by kissing Remy softly on the lips. They promised that after Pietro was out of the hospital they’d talk about it. Pietro told him he thought he like-liked him too. That made Remy blush a deeper red than he already was, a soft smile playing at his devilish face. 

Pietro told Clint all about it, detailing Remy and all his good points and some of his funnier bad ones. Telling him much he loved him, how he was so happy. How he was high and wouldn’t remember any of this as soon as he fell asleep, but oh, was it worth remembering. 

Clint sat by him all night, watching his son. He was a little adult now, having grown up over the past 8 months of knowing him. He was older, wiser, he knew things and he had someone. The thought was bitter sweet. 

Clint vowed to protect him, even though he was growing into a fine and capable man. He vowed to watch over his child better. 

The next day when the whole family visited they all sat around and watched the finals of the World cup, even Natasha pretending she was interested.

Clint cheered for which ever team Pietro was rooting for.

**Author's Note:**

> Please review !


End file.
